


Your wholeness cascades into so many shapes

by Lutelyre



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Sexual Content, Finally finished, Gaara Needs to Use His Words, I have been working on this fic for two years, Long Shot, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Mention of past Implied Sexual Assault, Much Excite, Narcotics, Naruto is the sun, Partying, Punk Gaara, Punk Naruto, Recreational Drug Use, Sad, Sexual Content, Slice of Life, Suicide Attempt, Suna City, Time Skips, Two Shot, Wow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 15:12:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2314025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lutelyre/pseuds/Lutelyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We are not history yet. We are happening now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: My Gaara/Naruto! I have been working on this fic since the summer of 2013, and it is finally finished! Wow! Mirror posted on FFnet.  
> I put all my efforts into finally finishing this as a birthday gift to my perfect little sister, Suncaught! Please let me know what you think! I’ve worked on this for so long I can’t wait to hear what people have to say about it. 
> 
> -Lute

Your Wholeness Cascades Into So Many Shapes

X

Oh won’t you stay with me,  
Because you’re all I need.

This ain’t love it’s clear to see,  
But darling, stay with me. 

X

This was the thing about Naruto.

This was the thing Gaara had known from the beginning, the very beginning: Naruto would always be too much. 

He is too much for Gaara, too much for Suna City, too much for the world. There are some people who live like exploding roman candles, who look at the world and laugh it away, and it is because they know there is more than this to reach for.

Gaara has reached for addiction, and he’s reached for things that burn his mouth and sear his veins. He’s reached for cruelty, and for ecstasy and for destruction, but he’s never reached as far as his bright, shining time with Naruto. 

You can only go so high before falling, but Gaara knows for awhile Naruto must have somehow kept him in the air. 

Just for a short while really, hardly more than a year, but it had been like flying and dying and fucking and laughing and crying, all at once, and now when Gaara sees a pale, tall summer sky, he can taste that height on his tongue.

Being with Naruto is like staring at the sun; simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. If you stare for too long, you feel yourself almost take flight.

X

The problem, Gaara had decided, was that Suna City made everything the same.

Suna was colorless, metal-proofed. It was sandy yellow, pale brown and washed out grey, sand getting into the cracks of the sidewalks and searing welts onto the window-panes. Maybe it was the reflection of the sun; spangles of light in your eyes and dancing spots along the edges of your lashes. Maybe it was the harsh wind that blew constantly, stripping layers and sediment away until all that remained was bare rock, weathered stucco, buffeted and stubborn skyscrapers. 

The desert that surrounded the Suna city-state was mean and unforgiving, with wind storms racketing along its slopes and whistling songs of forgotten old. New-Suna didn’t listen to the wind often.

New-Suna was interested in economy, in industry, in GDP and market-share and interest rates. They built tall office buildings in the upper sector and brought in CEOs from around the world to advise their parliament. New-Suna leaked excitement, prosperity, a shining sun emblem of ruby and gold gracing their stock market and the newest technologies of the day hissing on their factory lines. 

Suna City absorbed them. Her people sucked the future down into its’ old tunnels, deep into aquifers built generations ago by Old-Suna powerhouses.

Old-Suna, which still had the tinkling blown-glass market, the lower sectors where women wore head-veils and foreigners were not trusted. Old-Suna with its traffic-jammed winding streets and chaotic black markets. Old-Suna, oozing tar into its’ reservoirs and dealing in back alleys where adobe is crumbling, still holding corrupt officials in high places. 

Suna City absorbed everything; the clash of the future and past, the newly imported steel and weathered yellow sandstone. Suna leeches the world into sand-grains blown away in the wind, burned rich hues of color away under its harsh rays of sunlight.

In Suna everything continues in unwavering shades of brown and grey and yellow despite its age, everything milky and diluted under a vast sky. In Suna City everything is the same.

This was Gaara’s analysis.

Really, this was all the excuse Gaara needed to buy the little box of hair dye that sat quietly on the shelf of the convenience store. 

Outside, cars melted their wheels into the streets and horns honked abrasively. New-Suna business men and bright-future corporate interns’ angled sunglasses against the glare and hurried to their destinations on sidewalks that melded with the sky to form a wash of cracked and eroded grey. Outside the tiny corner store Gaara stands in there is a world that demands he follow form and function, demands he press himself against the stucco and become invisible. But inside Gaara selects the box of deepest, bloodiest red hair dye and slams it down on the checkout counter with one fluid movement. He levels a steady glare at the cashier from under his eyeliner, as if daring him to comment.

In Suna, Gaara’s hair was beautiful; the palest blonde-brown you could see, a wild silky tangle that blends so well into the adobe around him he sometimes thinks he can drown himself in it.

This was the ideal concept of beauty in Suna. Invisibility. Unnoticeable color. The ability to blend into a perfect picture, to refrain from drawing attention. To enhance its overall excellence by strength in numbers. It was a custom that echoed everything in Suna; society, education, government, attraction. Passerby were quick to admire Gaara’s chameleon effect. 

Old wives murmurs echoed in the streets; Suna City’s best trait is her adaptability, by her teeth it is, and look at that handsome boy with the pale hair walking by! Such a credit to his City. Why, he’s a true child of the desert, by her teeth he is.

Of course there are rebels, new thought-thinkers, punks and delinquents and naughty school-children, reckless young adults with rock-bands and imported drugs and vibrant colors popping up in their clothes, but they were disapproved of with such force they tended to stick to their own underground society, partying under the cover of deep night. 

Gaara was breaking the mold. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen anyone with this hair color in Suna. Frankly, he was surprised they sold the dye at all. His purchase paid for, Gaara breezed out into the street, his heart thumping inexplicably. 

Naruto would like it, he was sure.

X

Water is a valued resource in Suna City, but nevertheless, Gaara scrubbed until his shower was hot and steamy enough to trace patterns into the glass with his painted nails. The water tasted like the Suna aquifer, a thick cloying taste with chemical afterburn. When Naruto had first come to Suna and tilted his mouth up to taste the water from Gaara’s showerhead, he’d made a face. “Gross! Man, what do you guys put hin this stuff?”

Gaara had turned the water off, thrown a towel at him. “That’s not for drinking, stupid.” 

“All the water here tastes like that though, all grimy. I don’t know how I could drink this stuff my whole life.”

Gaara had raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never had any other kind.”

Naruto had chuckled incredulously, like bubbles bursting from his throat. He’d wrapped his arms around Gaara, heavy and bracing and smelling like Gaara’s shampoo, Gaara’s laundered towels. He’d pressed his wet face against Gaara’s neck and rumbled like a furnace, voice laughing; “Someday I’ll bring you some.”

Now, Gaara stepped out of the shower and eyed his reflection in the tiny mirror above his cracked sink with a smirk. His hair shined crimson even when wet, stark against his skin and red as blood, as roses. It was obvious, violent, and visible. Naruto would be ecstatic. Suna would be scandalized.

X

Gaara took the tube-train to the stop nearest to The Dunes and walked the rest of the way. At night the air of Suna was cold, icily dry, and his jacket flapped in the wind. With thick eyeliner dramatically edging his lids and the pale hollowness in his cheeks, Gaara has already drawn a few sneering looks on the train. He scoffs.

The Dunes swelled before him, a despot for the rougher inhabitants of Suna. ‘The Dunes’ was actually the name of a club chain in the area, but over time the entire sub-district of the city had picked up the title. Raucous and dedicated to rebellion, it barely resembled sand dunes. Instead, it was a scooped out underground industrial playground, a well hidden red-light sector that glittered with street graffiti and gyrated out thumping music from its covered windows. 

There were black market deals in drugs here, acid-pop electronica nightclubs and sex bars, prostitutes rouged and oiled on the streets. Gaara shook off a skinny man wearing gold lamé paint who blew blue smoke into Gaara’s face and wrapped an arm around his hips, and then ground his cigarette butt under his shoel, scanning the crowd of moving bodies in their usual club for Naruto.

Finding Naruto is always easy. Even though he’s hardly an inch taller than Gaara, the dip- dye orange-tipped strands of his wild blonde hair never fails to catch the flashing lights in the club and bounce straight into Gaara’s eyes. Naruto is in the center of the dance floor, his body moving fast and dangerous and slick, hips gyrating with something that isn’t elegant at all, which always gives Gaara a little thrill. 

Naruto doesn’t dance beautifully, or even with alot of skill, but there is something there, something in the tilt of his chin or the looseness of his back and shoulders, something that is exciting. 

He’s shirtless, glitter streaked down his chest, dancing with a slim slip of a girl with pale pink hair and heavy black combat boots, who Gaara knows must be foreign because no one that age in Suna can get away with fucking pink hair, no matter how ill-reputed their cram school. She must be one of Naruto’s uni-exchange friends. 

Gaara is maybe a little bit possessive, always has been, so when he pushes his way through the dance floor he pointedly waits a few feet away from Naruto until the other man takes his head up from Pinky’s neck long enough to glimpse him. 

When Naruto glances up he does a double take, and a grin splits his face in half. Then he drops a kiss on the girls cheek and moves away, sauntering towards Gaara. Her eyes are mint-green and intoxicating, but when she sees Gaara she smiles like she knows exactly who he is and melts away into the crowd without a murmur.

Gaara supposes he should be a little concerned about the reputation they have started to build because of that, but Naruto’s eyes are on him right now, blown wide and blue and beautiful, just drinking him in, so he can’t be expected to think about anything else. 

Naruto grabs Gaara’s hand, gets in real close. “Damn, babe.” 

“What do you think?” He tilts his chin up, lets some bloody-red bangs fall into his eyelashes. Naruto’s mouth is open. 

“You’re like a firecracker, Gaara--it’s hot as hell.” Naruto pulls Gaara flush against his hips, runs his hands through Gaara’s newly dyed locks like it’s precious. Gaara smiles. Heat is rising up his ribcage, like joy and sweetness. 

He loves how Naruto gets excited about this, this seemingly innocuous thing, just a hair-do, that Gaara knows will make Naruto laugh and smile and talk all week long.

“Yeah? You like it, huh?”

Naruto starts to dance with him, fingers still curled tight and pulling into his hair, all his skin pushed warm against Gaara’s, his mouth starting to roam over Gaara’s neck, wet heat along his earlobe.

“I love it.” 

Gaara closes his eyes, the heavy thrum of the music like a heartbeat shuddering through his veins.

“Tell me how much you love it.”

Naruto laughs in his ear, kisses his hair, kisses his eyelids. His body pulls Gaara into that off-kilter, not-quite-perfect rhythm.

“I fucking love it, babe. Fucking love it.”

X

Gaara met Naruto earlier that year, sometime in January.

It doesn’t snow in Suna City, but every winter there is an extreme amount of ice, and the wind blows harsh and cold, burning your fingers bloodless. Gaara had been skipping a University class seminar, smoking a cigarette and blasting music into his headphones instead, tucked away into a handy alcove of adobe near his lecture hall that sheltered him from the stiff gusts of wind blasting down the street. 

His music thunders warmly in his ears, bites some color back into his lips with a slow, scorching beat. His fingers shook when he tried to light another cigarette, and he cursed under his breath. It was too fucking cold.

He accidentally dropped three consecutive cigarettes into the slushed ice at his feet, and was about to give up when someone extended out a lighter, it’s thin flame steady and unwavering.

There, bundled up in an horrific and all-encompassing orange parka, with a tangled crop of sun-bright hair and the flame of the lighter dancing in front of his sparking, devilishly wide grin, was Naruto.

“Hey there, gorgeous.” 

Gaara had never liked pet names before they started slipping from Naruto’s lips.

He lights the cigarette with a muttered thanks, and then pointedly stepped back. When he met Naruto, Gaara had been interested in slightly dangerous, vicious fucks tossed from strangers more than actual commitment. 

He’d never meant to start up anything long-term with Naruto, but that’s the way Naruto liked to operate, of course, and Naruto was the kind of person where you barely realized you were doing things his way until it’s been quite firmly established in your brain as what you most wanted to happen in the world. 

Naruto had looked distinctly crazy, dressed so flamboyantly in Suna’s blandly colored world, and his accent is thick when he speaks. Like most born and bred Suna City natives, Gaara disliked foreigners. 

Naruto didn’t seem to realize the hint of disinterest, even when Gaara put his headphones back in with an irritated flick of his wrist. He chattered incessantly to Gaara, leaning close to him the entire time, his accent rough and thick like the sharp, tangy crust of an orange peel. 

“You must be a second-year right? I’m here from the continent, to study. Don’ really know what I’m studyin’ though, kinda got this scholarship from a friend--”

“Your coat is an eyesore.”

Naruto had done a double-take, mouth hanging open partway through his sentence, and then his eyes crinkled into a smile. He leans in close to Gaara, and his warm breath on the numbed shell of Gaara’s ear sents a sudden tingle up Gaara’s fingertips.

“Yeah? Well it does it’s gotta do it’s job anyway, because I ain’t got on nothin’ under it.” 

Gaara swallows a splutter. “The hell? Look, I’m clearly not fucking interested.”

Naruto backs away from him, back out of the alcove and into the sweeps of wind on the open street. He smiles at Gaara, and there is something like surprise in those blue, blue eyes, surprise and then slow consideration. 

“No problem darlin’. See you around, huh? My name’s Uzumaki Naruto”

Gaara didn’t respond, but when searching for his cigarettes later, he discovers Naruto slipped his lighter into Gaara’s pocket. There is a number written on it in a messy scrawl. Gaara jammed his headphones deeper into his ears, sighing.

When he caught sight of Naruto again, it was at the house party of some vague acquaintance, and Gaara is mostly drunk. 

He glimpsed Naruto across the room, making out aggressively with a man who has a shock of spiky black hair and lazily dark eyes. The man is shoved up against the wall, and Naruto is loud and powerful and entirely shameless. The stark geometric swirl of Naruto’s shoulder tattoo over the shifting muscles in his back made Gaara’s head spin. 

He doesn’t remember how, but the next morning he wakes up naked, with a nasty hangover, and Uzumaki Naruto boldly splayed next to him under the sheets of a bed that smelled like sex. 

Naruto spent about fifteen minutes laughing at the picky pale-eyed guy who’d turned him down a month ago, and then made Gaara breakfast.

It was absolutely delicious.

When Gaara wakes up in Naruto’s bed for the tenth time two weeks later to Naruto casually greeting him with a slice of buttered toast and a sticky kiss-- “Good mornin’ lover,”--he decides that perhaps this is an arrangement he can be comfortable with, at least for a few months.

Since then, they’ve been together in every sense of the word for over a year.

 

X

One of Naruto’s more harmless little quirks was that he liked to wear nail polish. It was shiny on his fingers,glinting in colors like pale indigo and minty white, deep black-viridian and sticky chartreuse. 

It wasn’t that unusual of a thing for the group that they hung out with; the pocket of punk delinquents in Suna that lashed against conformity in any fashion, but Gaara had been surprised that Naruto took part in it, and seemed to do it more for himself than for any notions of rebellion. He painted them every week or so, on the kitchen counter with an array of tiny glass bottles before him and a concentrating frown on his mouth.

Gaara hated the acidic smell of the polish, but he loved seeing the vivid colors that popped on Naruto’s nails, colors so rarely seen in Suna City flashing when Naruto gestured wildly in some passionate speech, standing out bright when he ran a rough, long-boned hand down the column of Gaara’s neck. It was one of Naruto’s little eccentricities, like the odd, off-kilter scars on his cheeks, the way he slept on the roof sometimes or occasionally talked to himself.

Gaara watched from the other side of the counter as Naruto leaned over his hand while painting. He was so comically focused that Gaara couldn’t help but reach out and tip over one of his bottles.

Naruto indignant face was ridiculous, all open mouth and furrowed eyebrows, as he looked up at Gaara’s amused expression. “Oi! What the hell Gaara!” 

Gaara reached forward and flicked over another one. The idiot shouldn’t leave the caps off if he didn’t want them spilled. Naruto made a horrified squeaking sound, and Gaara laughed out loud.

“That’s it, c’mere you little—“

Naruto manhandled him onto the couch, smile huge with gleeful retaliation. He shoved Gaara down, sat on his stomach, and proceeded to sloppily paint his toenails an unabashed shade of candy apple red. 

“Hey hey, no! Wait a minute!”

“Too late now, Gaara-chan! It suits you.” Naruto’s grin is completely evil as he finishes the last nail and blew on them briskly. Gaara gave up escape and covered his face with a pillow in defeat.

“You should let me do your hands next.”

“No fucking way.”

Naruto turned around on his stomach, tried to tug the pillow off of Gaara’s face. “Aww C’mon! You like the way mine look, I know you do. Don’t even try to deny it Gaara, don’t even try.”

Gaara sighed. He flung the pillow off, grabbed one of Naruto’s newly painted and dried hands, and caught a colorful finger up into his mouth, sucking thoughtfully as Naruto became still and his eyes zeroed in on Gaara’s lips.

He released the finger with a vicious bite on the nail and smirked. “Maybe I do.”

Naruto grinned, his free hand sliding down Gaara’s stomach to his belt buckle. “Y’know really, on second thought, why don’ I just paint your nails some other time, huh?”

“Good plan.”

Later, when Gaara starts occasionally wearing polish on a few fingers of each hand, Naruto doesn’t bother to contain his gloating.

X

Naruto and Gaara spent days lazing in bed, drawing patterns into each others skin and counting the freckles that scattered over Naruto’s shoulders. They made piles of pancakes at three in the morning, drowning them in chocolate syrup because Naruto had a bigger sweet tooth than anyone else Gaara had ever met. They forget which day of the week it is, waking up in foggy early-morning light and peeling oranges in bed, letting juice dribble stickily over their fingers. Naruto’s hands smelled like citrus and Gaara liked to lick them clean, the sharp, powdery flavor coating his tongue with a bitter, intoxicating residue. 

Gaara and Naruto did silly things, like spending a whole afternoon seeing who could build the most elaborate and complicated castle-fort from the silverware. (The winner was actually Gaara, even though Naruto claimed that his tea-cup turret tower was in fact an inch taller.) 

They did stupid things, like going down to one of the darkest black market squares Suna had to offer and trying to sell Naruto’s prized guppy goldfish with the guise of it being the rare and extremely expensive “baby gold-finned angel skipper, one of a kind from the Cailouh Isles! Get it now, while it lasts!” (Gaara is still traumatized by the experience, and Naruto is now banned from that part of the district.) 

Naruto was notorious at the grocery store for buying enough cup ramen to feed a small army, and then returning within the week for more. Gaara was partial to boiled eggs, and always kept at least three pre-boiled and labeled in the fridge next to regular ones. (Naruto rarely reads the labels, but Gaara perseveres anyway.) 

Naruto and Gaara would go sand-surfing out on the city borders and stay until the sun hovered in the sky and illuminated the whole city in a dazzling yellow light, skimming along the surface and spraying dirt particles up into the air that caught in their eyelashes and mouths and tasted like smacks of freedom. Naruto was surprisingly good at it, which was disgruntling because it took Gaara ages to get even marginally proficient at basic tricks, but Naruto would angle his board into impossible stunts, swooping from the crest of a dune to fly across the sky, doing twist jumps that landed on the heavy metal tracks of the magnetic train rails that eventually coasted them back into the city. 

Naruto broke his wrist in landing once, with a sickening crunch and then a weakly nonchalant chuckle, and Gaara had to drag his protesting ass to the hospital. Sand-surfing isn’t technically legal either, especially without a permit and on the city rails, which meant a lot of sidelong looks and muttered excuses and eventually bribing the hospital nurse. 

Naruto thought it was hilarious.

And then, of course, were the nights upon nights Naruto and Gaara spent out, locked into a nightclubs gyrating beat, swaying drunkenly through a mass of constantly moving bodies. The parties they went to were wild, crazy, a blur of lights and bodies and sounds that washed over Gaara’s ears and flashed in his eyes. They were always a little gritty, a little circumspect, but Gaara liked it like that. 

The rebellious 20-somethings of Suna explored farther every night, pushed the boundaries a little bit further with every new trend, every fleeting amusement, and Gaara loved it best when someone pressed something new into his palm, with a whisper and a smile. Something better, something more, something that was fresh, hot off of the streets, and everyones talking about it, the feeling is the best. It takes you to a whole new world. 

Naruto would wink, put the pill on his tongue and clink their shot glasses together. “Here’s to trying new things!” The grin on his face is huge, shining brightly even on the back of Gaara’s eyelids.

They danced and laughed and sang with people Gaara had never seen before and rarely saw after, faces passing glazed before him. Naruto was quick to gather a crowd, a group that varied every time, cheering and chattering, kissing his cheeks, linking his arms, telling him their closest secrets and then disappearing into a hungover haze. They would begin the night on one end of town and end in the other, waking curled together, missing clothing and covered in glitter and sweat. Naruto would stretch his arms over his head and yawn luxuriously.

“That was a good one, Gaara.”

They broke into old warehouses, packed into clubs or flat parties, jumped city tubelines and swung on the power grids, laughing uproariously. They fucked on the dancefloor, against alleyways, in a bed that wasn’t theirs in a house they didn’t know who owned.

Gaara felt exhilarated, floating and easy and sweet-candy-mouthed. Naruto’s hand pulled him along, wrapped around the back of his neck possessively, hung across his chest protectively. Whenever he turned around, Naruto was there with his face crazy under the lights, his skin hot, and his laugh wild. Gaara couldn’t help but throw himself into it all, because Naruto was there, right there, and suddenly things were easy, beautiful, effortless.

Sometimes they were separated, and when Gaara woke up Naruto would be nowhere in sight. He’d pick his way out of the unfamiliar house, cross the city with dogged steps, make his way back to his apartment to unlock the door and find Naruto, rumpled but looking like he’d had the time of his life, making eggs. Naruto loved scrambled eggs in the early morning, and the smell of whites sizzling in the pan made Gaara want to throw up, but he would eat them anyway, with Naruto’s voice rambling and babbling about the night before humming like a mantra in his ears. 

X

Naruto woke Gaara up by kissing him, morning breath and scrunched up smile, cheek-stubble tickling his nose. 

“Ughhhh. Get off...”

Gaara blinked himself awake, pushing Naruto off of him.

“Good mornin’ sleepyhead!” Naruto looked entirely too awake to have consumed the amount of alcohol he had last night. Really, just entirely too chipper. It was like a mutation of his. 

Gaara looked around, pushing himself up on his elbows. They were once again in an unfamiliar bed, at an unfamiliar house. It was a good sized room, which meant it was probably a rich-person flat. Suna just didn’t have the space to accommodate many people anymore, unless of course, you had the means. There was a small window with curtains blocking the sun, a few other people passed out against the wall or stretched out on the floor half out of the closet. The bed was low to the ground, fitted with blue sheets. There were books on a shelf, a few cracked pictures on the nightstand of some unknown boys with black hair. 

Not anyone Gaara knew. He shifted, pulling closer to Naruto, nuzzling into his scent and the smoothness of his bare skin. He had no clue where his clothes were, but didn’t particularly care. “Any idea where we are then?”

Naruto made a humming noise. “Nope.” His lips popped the ‘p’ sound exaggeratedly, grinning. 

Gaara rolled on top of Naruto, kissed him despite the morning breath and hangover stink because, well, what the hell. It’s too nice a bed, too groggy a morning, and too good an opportunity to pass up. Naruto chuckled, ran his hands up Gaara’s back to tug him closer, tangled their tongues together.

When Naruto flipped their positions, his lips clever against Gaara’s chest, along the curve of one hip, Gaara curled fingers into the dirty strands of Naruto’s hair, breathless and frustrated and---

“...Ahem.” 

There was a creak from the door as someone leaned against it’s frame. A disgruntled cough came, as though irritatedly amused. Naruto twisted around, and Gaara closed his eyes, simultaneously slightly embarrassed and ridiculously annoyed. 

It looked like Mr. Rich-boy-who-owns-the-flat was home. Now they get to be kicked out. Wonderful. Gaara reached around off the bed to try and look for his pants. 

A mistake, as it turned out. Naruto had turned at the sound of the cough, and now suddenly his eyes light up.

“What..?! You bastard! What the hell are you doing here!?”

The huge, shit-eating grin on his face is completely at odds with his words as Naruto jumped out of the bed, entirely naked, and proceeded to tackle hug the man leaning against the door. Pillows went flying.

Gaara found himself in a mild state of shock.

He scrambled the sheet around his hips, watching incredulously as the dark-haired man struggled, rather half-heartedly, to get out of Naruto’s chokehold. 

“This is my flat that you’ve been fucking in, loser.”

Naruto’s expression got even brighter. “Fuck no!” His hands ruffled the already mussed hair excitedly. “Fuck no it’s not! I thought Itachi wasn’t gonna let you come to Suna anymore? Somethin’ about how a certain Uchiha has to crack down on his studies or risk gettin’ cut out of the will?” 

The man grimaced a bit, finally disentangling himself enough to stand face to face with Naruto. He was maybe an inch or so taller, with finely cut aristocratic features and the same slightly twanging accent that Naruto had, although his speech was softer, more restrained. 

He sounded expensive. 

He was also smiling, a quirked upward lip that seemed to contain a lot more hidden happiness than he was letting on.

“Let’s just say I convinced Itachi. I’ve been here about a month.” He raised an eyebrow at Naruto. “I can see you’ve been doing the usual. Maybe you should put on some clothes?”

Naruto didn’t seem to care. “Maa, It’s nothing you ain't seen before.” A wink. “Maybe a little more ink than last time I got to see you. I can’t believe you didn’t let me know you were here, bastard.” Naruto gripped the man’s head between both hands and kissed him firmly. 

Gaara's eyes widened. Naruto was friendly, but he didn’t usually go around kissing people. It was a quick kiss, a friendly kiss. It barely lasted long enough for the other man to kiss back, but Gaara still felt like perhaps he had suddenly woken up in an alternate version of reality.

He sat up a little straighter, about to do something stupid like clear his throat or make a commotion, when Naruto suddenly turned around, one arm still around the dark-haired man’s neck, his face glowing and the smooth planes of his skin golden in the morning light through the curtains. 

“Oi, sorry Gaara! This piece of shit is Uchiha Sasuke, old friend of mine.” 

Sasuke’s wry smile widened, once again prying his way out from under Naruto’s hands. He had the tail end of a swirling tattoo peeking from under his shirt, a line of studs up one ear, and Gaara noticed that, like Naruto, he painted his nails. A small hoop glistened on one corner of his lip.

It was all extremely attractive, and Gaara felt increasingly uncomfortable. He wished Naruto would put on some fucking clothes.

“Sorry to interrupt. Pleased to meet you.” Sasuke sounded like he could’ve been meeting a foreign dignitary with the amount of carefully disguised neutrality in his voice, instead of a guy who by all accounts and purposes had been about to get sucked off by his ‘old friend’.

Naruto laughs harder.

“Well, I guess it is your bed. Sasuke, meet my boyfriend, Gaara.” Naruto’s smile is contagious. 

Amend the previous conclusion to about to get sucked off in his bed. Gaara suddenly imagines Sasuke sleeping here. Every night. Splayed over the covers, sweating from the heat, pierced mouth hanging open. Which side of the bed did he sleep on? 

Gaara shifted uneasily. He really does not need this mental image right now, half-hard under the flimsy sheet anyway and already annoyed with the awkwardness of this morning.

He manages not to flush, nodding awkwardly to Sasuke instead. “I wasn’t planning on running into one of Naruto’s old friends quite like this.” Naruto snickers into his palm in a really obvious way and Gaara feels like slapping him.

“It’s nice to meet you. Thanks for the bed.” 

As he spoke, Gaara let his voice get a little bit smug. 

He hadn’t quite recovered from his boyfriend laying a wet one on someone else yet, and felt the need to claim some territory here, okay, despite rich-boy-old-friend-Sasuke being the most hospitable person yet to walk in on Naruto and Gaara about to start banging.

Sasuke blinks, raises one eyebrow in a thoughtful way for half a second before tilting his head graciously. (Seriously, Gaara thinks the guy knows how to be a diplomat with those manners, considering the situation.) 

Naruto smirks, comes back to the bed and slides a warm hand over Gaara’s shoulder, almost like a reassurance. Gaara relaxes a little, tugging Naruto down and crossing his arms over the other man’s chest possessively. Naruto turns within the hold of Gaara’s arms to watch as Sasuke, determining introductions to be over, decided to busy himself with systematically kicked out the other party-goers who had crashed in the room, and then walking into the bathroom to apparently brush his teeth.

“God, I missed him.” Naruto’s voice is quiet, a sort of peaceful wistfulness lingering under his words. 

Gaara strokes his hair. “How does he know you?” 

It was clear that Sasuke knew Naruto, evident from the way Sasuke had immediately responded to Naruto’s kiss, as though expecting it. 

Naruto always seemed to know everyone, but someone being close with him in return is far less common. Naruto sighed a little. “We were kids together. The bastard. I’ve always had to cover his ass.”

A toothbrush still dangling from his lips, Sasuke reappears at the words and throws Naruto’s jeans at the bed. “More like I’ve always had to save yours. Get dressed, I was out all night and want to sleep.” 

Naruto pouts. “Well, so do I! Gaara and I had to hit double just to have a good time.”

Gaara can’t stop a slight half-groan escaping his lips, suddenly becoming aware of his splitting headache. 

Sasuke smirked. “Not my problem, loser. By all means, stick around. But you gotta share the bed.”

Gaara stiffens without even thinking about it.

“Tell your charming boyfriend to relax.” Sasuke’s bored look was a little too understanding. “I’m fucking exhausted and I paid for this flat. You’re used to begging anyway, Naruto.”

Naruto bundles himself over to one side of the bed, taking Gaara with him, who fees nonplussed by all this conversation that seemed to hold some sort of dialect that he didn’t understand, an undercurrent of banter which only comes from familiarity.

Sasuke strips his shirt off, revealing an intricate black-ink dragon tattoo that coils around his sternum and makes Gaara catch his breath in surprise, and collapses on the other side of the mattress with his back towards them. 

Naruto snorts.

“Sure, sure you paid for it. Don’t try and tell me you didn’t get all this from big brother Itachi. Stop trying to sell drugs Sasuke, you suck at it. “ 

“Shut up, fuckwit.”

With much maneuvering of limbs, Gaara manages to get himself untangled from Naruto’s arms and out of the bed. He is massively uncomfortable, but Naruto seemed completely ready to relax back into a lazy morning in someone elses bed. (Not that this isn’t abnormal, but usually the owner of said bed is assuredly absent.) 

Ignoring the half-question, half-whine noise Naruto makes, Gaara grabs his jeans and a pack of smokes and slips from the room. Naruto would just go back to sleep anyway.

On the roof things smell a little better, Suna winds sweeping away the smell of vodka and party-vomit that Sasuke’s whole apartment reeked of.

Gaara smokes cigarettes for breakfast and waits for Naruto to groggily wake up in a few hours and come to find him. The sun is steadily inching it’s way up over the horizon, a faint hazy-white smog hanging heavy over the city and getting caught in whorls on the spires of New Suna skyscrapers. The air feels like dust and flame and the slow rise of heat. 

Gaara waits. He is shaking off the image of Sasuke and Naruto, the way Naruto’s hands fit against Sasuke’s face. There have been plenty of people Naruto knows in their life together. 

He waits patiently for Naruto to come, smelling like a mixture of warm exhaustion and cheap booze, dribble-dripping his brown-sugar morning kisses up to Gaara’s lips. 

It takes a long time, too long for Gaara, who likes to think of himself as patient but should really know better. When the sun has burned away the white haze in streaks of sizzling concrete and car horns, Gaara walks back into the flat to see Naruto and Sasuke still asleep on the bed, facing towards each other. 

There is about a foot of space between them, and Naruto is dreaming deep enough that he isn’t even muttering in his sleep, but Gaara finds himself unsettled by the picture. 

X

He stays unsettled for a while. 

Sasuke is with them often now. Gaaa gets increasingly more possessive and snappish--snide remarks and sarcastic comments are a special talent of his--until he realizes Sasuke doesn’t seem to give two fucks about what he thinks. After that, it is more a matter of Gaara nursing his wounded pride rather than actually repairing their interactions. 

Sasuke and Naruto are never more than friendly, but it is a friendly that tickles Gaara, slips its fingers over the knobs of his spine like it’s meticulously testing the strength of each vertebra.

It’s a childhood-friend-forever friendly, mixed with hints of the lingering intimacy of past lovers. Sasuke knows how to move around Naruto, the way they weave on the sidewalk together and take up space together unthinkingly, even with Naruto’s fingers interlocked in Gaara’s, drawing stares from the passer-by. 

Gaara takes the time he has with Naruto when Sasuke isn’t around feverishly, gobbles it up and demands more of it, all of it, all Naruto has to give. He grabs Naruto’s chin between his fingers, jerks the other man’s head up forcefully to lock onto his gaze and bathe himself in all the love he knows Naruto keeps for him there, shining from his eyes with touching sincerity. 

Naruto is insufferably oblivious as usual, someone who can easily balance so many people in his heart at once that the idea of someone being selfish with love isn’t one he can really quite wrap his head around, although he tries, for Gaara’s sake.

Sasuke stays an impenetrable, unerringly diplomatic enigma, managing to project a slightly snobbish air of confidence even while kicked up out of his mind on drugs, even when caught being fucked on his hands and knees on the floor by someone who makes Naruto curl his lip in vague disapproval. He is devastatingly attractive, all cold angles and dark eyes, licking his lips nonchalantly whenever he catches Gaara staring at him. 

Gaara tried to not look too hard, or for too long.

X 

Their bedroom is slow and silent, as if holding it’s breath under the heaviness of the air. Gaara feels like he is waiting desperately for something. His tongue is dry and papery in his mouth, a clump of sand. He can’t move fast enough—

He held Naruto’s face in his hands; stroking his cheeks, kissing his eyelids, his chin, his scars with lips that trembled with anticipation. Naruto tenses, his muscles seizing up, and then hisses under his breath and relaxes, lids sliding open.

His eyes are blown out and beautiful, dilated until the blue was only visible in thin shining rings. A little groan escapes his lips as the burn of the drug pushes through his system, cheeks hollowing at the sting, and then he sighs deeply, tongue poking between his teeth. 

He runs his hands up Gaara’s neck, clutches handfuls of his hair. 

“Ahh yeah. Niiice.” The words rumbled under his breath.

Gaara’s throat is like padded cotton. The bedroom is so heavy, so silent, its colors muted in shades of blue and black he can hardly see through. He whines a little as Naruto mouths at his neck.

“C’mon Naruto…”

Naruto laughs. He flicks the needle out of his skin, grabs a clean one. Gaara sighs at the sting of it sliding into his arm. “C’mon, come on…”

It hits like a live wire heat in his veins, like popping in his skull, wetness in his mouth. He stumbles forward to chase his hands down the sparkles that appear blinking along Naruto’s bare chest, threading his stomach. Lightheaded, Gaara’s feet and arms tumble over themselves, landing him breathless and laughing with Naruto on the unmade bed. They push their lips together messily, wrestling on the sheets, until Gaara’s head suddenly lolls loosely on his neck like a lifeless, useless doll.

Naruto pulls away, his eyebrows coming together in a slow furrow of concern.

“You alright?” He sounds worried. Gaara vaguely thinks he’s being silly. Stupid Naruto.

“Is that too much? Gaara…” Naruto reaches for the needle but Gaara slaps his hand away, kissing him instead. He rolls himself over the warmth of Naruto’s stomach, presses his forehead into Naruto’s track-marked arm.

“Its okay, its okay…I’m okay…”

X

Naruto didn’t often talk about his past. Gaara only knew the basics; that Naruto was an orphan since a young age, lived with a stream of relatives until around the time he was 11, until he stuck with one guardian who seemed to be a family friend. 

He knew Naruto came from the other continent and was here to study at University. But that was it. And that wasn’t much to know really, when you lived with a person, knew them so well that you finished their sentences and bought the 2% milk without needing to be told, knew their skin like a well-read book and trusted them implicitly. 

That fact that Naruto was rather tight-lipped about his past in a way he wasn’t at all tight-lipped with literally anything else would have bothered Gaara more, but he didn’t especially get a huge kick out of reminiscing his own childhood.

He didn’t press the issue very often, because Naruto was terribly blasé about prying into every other aspect of Gaara’s business, but he rarely asked Gaara questions about his past, out of some sort of unspoken understanding. Gaara felt it was only fair to return the favor.

This must be the reason why, after Sasuke’s unprecedented emergence with his startling familiarity with Naruto, Gaara felt a little blown away. Naruto knew everybody, knew them extremely well. He knew everybody’s hopes and aspirations and friends and fathers and sisters, but not many knew him especially well in return. 

Sasuke was like the appearance of a specter, a sudden tangible fragment of Naruto’s past, his childhood, that Gaara hadn’t expected to exist. (Why hadn’t he expected it? Gaara didn’t like to think about it, but this pocket of rebellious existence with Naruto, with all of its gritty anti-glamour and flashing strobe-light beauty, was like a soap bubble Gaara didn’t know could be popped from the outside.)

Sasuke aside, Gaara could count on one hand the number of times Naruto talked openly with him about his childhood, his family, and once and only once, the scars on his face. It usually happened when they were really a bit too high, so tripped out that Gaara rarely remembered everything that was said; sentences and secrets lost in the moments between moments where time lost her footholds and fell blankly through space.

Naruto talked to himself more than Gaara ever noticed. Mostly, he muttered giggling conversations where he would convince himself to actually attend a class seminar, and then talk himself out of it again. Reminders to pick up food, mumbled bits of music, criticisms of his hazy artwork and tattoo designs. Gaara often answered the questions Naruto asked himself just to remind Naruto he was there. The other man would blink, pause for what always seemed like a second too long, and then laugh and continue on. When Gaara teased him about it, he would blush a little, scratch his head in abashed embarrassment.

“Ehh, it got lonely as a kid y’know? I was always by myself. What’s a guy to do?” The pout on his face was like a child caught raiding the sweet drawer.

Sometimes though, Naruto’s inner conversations were darker, more intense, almost violent.

He would murmur unintelligible words to himself that slipped up in the stream of his sentences, shuttered the vibrancy of his smile.

“--Don’t, don’t please…Kyuubi!…I’ll fuck you, I’ll fuck you up so hard…I don’t know…little baby crying like a stuck pig…Don’t!...”

Naruto would scratch at his face when this happened, punch walls and knock over chairs, scream at Gaara with a hoarse, guttural voice, leaking from bloodshot eyes tears he didn’t even seem to know he was crying.

Gaara didn’t really know how to act when Naruto got like that, but from the beginning Naruto had utterly accepted Gaara’s own idiosyncrasies, and so Gaara did the same. When Gaara’s insomnia came, Naruto would follow him about as he wandered the tiny apartment late into the night, keep him safe on the streets. When Gaara had periodic bouts of fragile, moody silence that lasted for up to days at a time, Naruto chattered enough for the both of them, uncaring of the lack of response.

They were both messed up, but Gaara felt stupidly more safe with Naruto than he’d felt with anyone else in his entire life ever, a blanket sort of safety that stayed firmly anchored, despite what they did and didn’t know about one another.

X

When Naruto told him about his scars, it was just the two of them late in the night in their tiny flat. Naruto ran the backs of his fingers slowly over Gaara’s cheeks as they sat across from each other cross-legged on top of the kitchen table. 

They were once again probably a bit too high, trying out a new drug one of Sasuke's contacts had picked up. It was potent and sweet like sugar, making everything hazy and back-lit somehow in black and white shadow. Everything seemed terribly new and old at the same time, and Gaara wondered at the textures against his palms, the feeling of wood grain under his legs and fabric from his loose shirt over his chest. His hands explored Naruto's skin like it was new again.

Naruto had been crying for some reason, because Naruto cried easily, spilling tears silently over the scars on his cheeks like stars. Gaara found himself watching the way they slid over the scarred grooves in his skin, dark and prominent over Naruto’s face. He leaned forward and, feeling curious and uninhibited, licked one.

Naruto shuddered under his tongue.

“Gaara-“ and his murmur was horse and small. “Gaara...?”

Gaara moved to the other side of Naruto’s face, mouth pressing open kisses on the skin.

“Mhmm?”

“Gaara, sometimes I hear scary things in my head.”

Gaara didn’t stop moving. He was just too high. 

Well, he heard things too. Heard them now, nibbling along his mind like they were waiting to get in, eat through the epidermis. Monster-things like a faceless woman consumed with guilt, a father that didn’t deserve the name, clicking and crawling around like sand fleas in his skull. They were there for Naruto too. But that was okay. Everything was okay now.

“You're not the only one.”

Naruto sighs

His lips are soft, like balm and honey, and in comparison his scars under Gaara’s mouth feel ripped, ragged, raw and open.

This new drug was good, really good. It made Gaara feel open, aimless and liberated. He dragged his tongue up along one scar boldly.

“…How’d you get these?”

Naruto stiffened for a moment. Then his words were very slow.

“Kitchen knife... I was eleven years old.”

“You did it yourself?”

Naruto chuckled at that, low and almost cruel.

“Nahh. M’ Uncle Kyuubi. Some of my family members weren’t very nice.” Naruto’s voice is harsh now, full of derisive malice. “Used to beat me up a lot. One day he held me down and carved up my face. Would’ve done more, but I wouldn’t stay still.” 

Naruto seemed like he didn’t know how to stop talking, his words coming faster, harder. “That’s why they’re crooked y’know. Crooked scars. He was fucked up. In the head." 

Gaara’s head is reeling. Naruto is still crying, silent but angry now, his hands gripping Gaara’s shoulders like they are a lifeline, eyes looking at something else.

"He kept calling me a little baby to scream. A helpless little baby. Stupid, just fuckin’ stupid...

...Sasuke found me.”

Gaara imagines Sasuke, Sasuke with his wry half-smile, looking for Naruto after school, finding him with a bloody face on a dirty kitchen floor. Blood everywhere; blood in his eyelashes, blood on his teeth. Really fucking red blood, standing out against the yellow of his hair. 

He kisses the scars, hands fisted in Naruto’s shirt.

“Naruto..”

Naruto twitches, like he was coming back into himself. “I don’t want any pity, Gaara.”

Gaara shook his head, mouth still on the scars. 

“...No, it’s just...My...My dad is a corrupt sadistic criminal. I think he raped my mom.” His whole life was in that sentence, unsaid things tumbling out from under his tongue, from somewhere he always tried to ignore. 

“It’s because I’m a bastard. He’s in the city council, I can’t prove... and... fuck.”He shut his mouth tight before he could say anything else, before he could say anything else about the horror, the guilt, the unwanted monster-child who had never been wanted, never wanted by anyone at all.

A pause. A sigh.

“Not because you’re a bastard Gaara.” Naruto’s voice was soft again, and time is slow and seeping, black and white shadows around their faces and lights blurry on the edges. Gaara feels weightless and tingling. “Not because of you.”

Gaara laughs a little like crying.

Naruto leans forward, kisses Gaara slow and heavy. “We’re pretty fucked up together huh.”

X

Naruto slept on the roof sometimes, after a particularly bad episode. He used to say it made him feel safer. 

That night Gaara followed him up, when they had kissed on top of the kitchen table until their lips were swollen. Still tripping, the ladder up out of the tiny skylight looked impossibly high, like a sudden pretentious gateway to the heavens. 

On top of the roof, flat adobe and dry-ice heat, They wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled together. Suna City before them was huge, glowing black and white under the starless sky, cloudy from factory smoke.

Street signs and traffic signals winked at them like tiny yellow eyes dotting the landscape, headlights of cars winding their way along the streets below, endless wavering lights in the darkness meandering along the fringe of the world. Each one was a weary, lonesome traveler of the deep night, waiting to evaporate under the harsh steam of sun. 

Gaara felt tired, stretched thin with kisses and drugs, like his limbs were too long for his body and his ribs were too tight on his chest. Like strings coming loose from the sleeve of a sweater.

Naruto tucked around him, blankets a tight wad despite the heat, his chin nestled into the hollow of Gaara’s neck. 

“No stars then.”

“Guess not.”

“Ehh screw it, Gaara. They can’t see us anyway. We’re not fucking important.”

Gaara thought maybe he was still irrationally high, because Naruto’s careless statement made him sad. Sad enough to read back through the wad of blankets and stroke one of Naruto’s scars with a calloused thumb. 

“You’re important enough, y’know.”

Naruto pushed his nose into the dark curls of Gaara’s hair, red like blood and guilt.

"Love you too, babe.”

Gaara stayed awake long after Naruto started to snore softly, desert wind chapping his cheeks raw. He stared up at the empty blue-black sky, crying a little like laughing.

X

End 1st Part. Continue reading on for 2nd part!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a two part fic. Continue reading on for the 2nd and final installment of this fic!
> 
> Please let me know what you think!
> 
> -Lute :)


	2. 2nd Part

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2nd and Final half of Your Wholeness...

Your Wholeness Cascades Into So Many Shapes

X

Naruto fucked like they were the only people in the world.

He fucked like his mouth was made for Gaara’s cock and his hands were made for Gaara’s skin. Naruto fucked like a maelstrom, like a tornado, like a natural disaster wreaking havoc without care, beautiful and incomprehensible. When Gaara arched under him, eyes screwed shut and teeth gritted, Naruto crushed him into the sheets, cracked his ribs open and imploded his heart.

Naruto was heat in his lungs, heat in the soles of his feet and the veins of his wrist. Naruto shoved him into walls, pressed him onto tables, jerked his head back and his hips forward and his mouth open. Naruto twined their fingers together, breathed into Gaara’s lips, shuddered above him like a star going supernova.

Naruto was a tender mouth just barely brushing his jaw, one hand curled tight around Gaara’s thigh as Gaara rode him slow and languid like molten rock. 

Naruto was high out of his mind, hands rough under Gaara’s back, hiking his legs up, movements quick and leg tendons straining as he bends over Gaara’s stomach to taste the salt of his skin there. He grins, crazed and tripping and somehow glorious, and Gaara’s nails scrape wood from the headboard. 

Naruto was playful, rolling his pelvis in a quick-quick-slow tease— just a little more now—and smirking like a demon and rubbing his face into Gaara’s, mouth smiling wide, ready to eat him whole. Naruto clutched him, wrapped around him so tightly sometimes Gaara felt like he didn’t know where his skin ended and Naruto’s began.

Naruto fucked like he meant it, with every fiber of his being, and Gaara fucked back like he could write himself into Naruto’s bones; along his ribs, the insides of his collarbones, and the ridges of his spine. Sex with Naruto was an explosion, deep inside his skin, and it redesigned Gaara’s foundations, flung him into space.

X

In that sweet and succulent time in the middle of the night, when the air is velvety over your eyes and dawn hasn’t yet cracked the surface of the sky, Naruto jerks awake, gasping. Gaara stirred next to him, mumbles to himself.

“Mmm, Naru…? Whas’it?...”

The thin blankets were askew, and the bed felt hot, stifling, like a sinking pit of linen. Gaara flung a leg out from under the sheet and slings an arm across Naruto’s chest, which was streaked in sweat. Naruto was up on his elbows still, and Gaara pressed his mouth to the junction of his collarbone.

Naruto flopped onto his back. “Nothing. Jus’ a dream.”

He was staring at the ceiling with wide eyes, his mouth open like a fish, and Gaara rolled over a little bit more, propped his chin up on Naruto’s chest. “Bad?”

“Nah…” Naruto smiled, ran pale blue-painted nails through Gaara’s hair fondly. Gaara raised an eyebrow, suspecting a lie, and Naruto pulled him up further on his chest, cradled Gaara’s face, mingling their breath.

“It was weird, kinda. There was this ocean, see? A really huge one, and I was walkin’ on top of it, like magic or somethin’. I could see for miles, y’know what I mean?”

Gaara blinked. “I’ve never seen the ocean.”

Naruto’s eyes closed in frustration. His fingers wandered along the back of Gaara’s skull as though searching for pressure points. He frowned.

“Ugh, well see, I don’t know how to describe it. Bigger than anything y’ve ever seen, I guess, and all these impossible colors...blue and black. It’s got waves that spit white foam and get so big that they pull you out to the far sea, where there ain’t nothing for miles but salt on your lips and jellies licking at your toes.”

Naruto gripped Gaara’s head tighter as he spoke, his eyes focusing on something behind Gaara, something with impossible colors.

“It’s got this rhythm, a sort of constancy, y’know? With the waves and the tides and all...with it all spread under your feet like that...” He sucked the side of Gaara’s neck gently, wetly, and Gaara mumbled something about it being too hot, but he didn’t think Naruto heard him.

“If I was walking on an ocean… makes you invincible, there’s so much…” He trailed off, muttering nonsense to Gaara’s neck.

Gaara tried not to feel suddenly a little alone, even though Naruto was right in front of him. Sometimes Naruto got like this in the night; full of an intensity that Gaara wasn’t privy to, launched out to somewhere where Gaara wasn’t sure he even existed. 

He stroked Naruto’s hair, wondering what the ocean might be like. When he thought about it, he saw textbook pictures from biology class of squid and sea-kelp, layers of density stratification, water sustainability techniques, evaporation.

If he dug a little deeper, there was a picture of Temari building a sandcastle when she was very young in front of a washed out, vaguely blue background and a slight pinch on the cheek as she chided him for looking through her stuff. His father discussing business on the phone about luxury ocean goods and sneering at him to get out of the room. There was none of the shimmering vastness Naruto whispered of, none of the possibility.

In comparison, Gaara wondered if it was even really real.

Just as Gaara was about to voice this thought, Naruto grasped a fist in his hair and pulled his head back, murmuring down Gaara’s neck with an open mouth. He flipped them on the low bed so that he was an insubstantial figure above Gaara in the dark, with the night’s heavy blackness clinging to his limbs like a milky wave in the dewy half-light seeping in from the crack under the door.

The room was hot, Suna desert heat amped up by confined city-space. Naruto’s hands feel rough like sand-paper on Gaara’s slick skin, and he is heat against Gaara’s neck, over his chest, sliding like sweat down between his ribs and further, until he opens his mouth and swallows Gaara's cock, mouths it into hardness.

Gaara clenched his fingers into a pillow, while Naruto’s fingers traced wandering seaweed patterns over his back.

When Naruto is kneeling over Gaara’s back, skin sticky-hot and one palm pressing between Gaara’s shoulder blades, pushing him down into the mattress as his hips surge, his breath gritty and sweet against Gaara’s ear, Gaara arches his back like a bow. He reaches back to grip Naruto’s thigh, little moans catching under his breath.

Naruto was still talking, breathless half-sentences winding out under his panting that Gaara can’t decipher, and wasn’t sure he was really supposed to. Gaara pressed harder against Naruto’s skin, his ear back farther to Naruto’s mouth, wishing for something he didn’t quite know how to explain.

But when Gaara came, hot like a sandstorm in his belly, Naruto lurched forward, gripped Gaara’s chin. “I’ve got dreams Gaara, y’know? I’ve got plans... promises.”

He whispered the words against Gaara’s lips like sacrament, like prayer. “They’re…they’re bigger than anything else.”

His lips were soft, the words rasping and quiet, almost insignificant in their unobtrusive passage over Gaara’s mouth.

But later, alone in bed while Naruto showered, spread eagle across it like an offering to some ancient God, Gaara felt unsettled, inconsistent, something messy in his stomach. Naruto didn’t usually shower right after sex, preferring to wrap himself around Gaara in the middle of their sweaty sheets, inhale his skin like he couldn’t get enough of that spicy, salty smell always lingering in the air.

Tonight had been different somehow.

Gaara thought about the words Naruto had murmured, with the thin cotton sheets tangling around his legs like quicksand, and wondered if he’d ever see the ocean.

X 

“I’m leaving Suna City.”

A pause. Gaara’s stomach might have just bottomed out.

“...What...Why?” 

“It’s time to leave. Time to go for a few dreams. Keep some more promises. I’m going to head back to the other continent. We both know I’m failing at school anyway.” A laugh, a grin tugging the corner of one mouth.

Gaara swallows.

“Sasuke wants to head out in a month or so, so I’ll start packing up my stuff soon.” His voice was so easy, so relaxed. Like it was absolutely nothing.

It was fucking unfair.

“Sasuke...?...and what about...” The words get stuck somewhere in his chest. -What about me What about me what about me-

“Hey, hey..” 

A cool hand against his face, mouth against his own. He kisses back automatically, ingrained response, and what if this is one of the last times, Oh God no...

“ Hey, don’t worry about it, alright? S’not that big a deal. Everything’s okay, We’ll be okay.” 

A smile; jarring, all white teeth. Fingers brushing his cheek, moving away. Footsteps leaving.

Quiet kitchen, air vacuuming away from this moment and this second and this urge to reach for his hand but--

Gaara feels like he is drowning.

X

When his hands hold a bag of new pills and a bottle of vodka two weeks later, when Naruto isn’t home, hasn’t been for a few days now what with moving preparations, When whatishappening and hedoesn’tknowanythinganymore,

Gaara is still drowning.

X

"--These nights never seem to go to plan  
I don't want you to leave, will you hold my hand?--"

X

Hospitals are such sterile places. They’d taken out his nose stud to “help him breathe” with all the tubes sticking in his face, but Gaara thought that was bullshit. He would’ve told them that it was bullshit too, but talking was a bit of a chore. The hospitals sterile walls and sterile floor and sterile sheets filled his vision and blended everything into a white haze that blurred and buzzed and eventually went black again.

He wondered where Naruto was.

“…don’t know what the fuck you were thinking. What were you thinking?...”

Gaara blinks his eyes open and there he is. Naruto is sitting by the bed, looking monumentally pissed. He had dark smudged circles under his eyes, rumpled clothes that looked as though he hadn’t changed in several days, and his hair was an unwashed, spiky mess. He sat with hands cupping his chin, glaring with such force at the medical chart attached to the foot of Gaara’s bed that it took Gaara a second to realize what the issue was. 

The hospital’s whiteness loomed up from all sides.

He sighed.

Naruto noticed him stirring. “OI! Are you awake?”

He made a noncommittal noise.

“You are! God! Gaara you fucking dumbass. I’m gonna kick your ass when you get out of here.” While a steady stream of furious words poured from his mouth, Naruto moved in one broad, quick motion and was on the bed, straddling Gaara’s tubes and kissing him fiercely; his face, his ears, his neck. His hands slid up under Gaara’s hospital gown and traced patterns over his chest.

“I’m so pissed at you.” Naruto mumbled it between kisses, his hands almost harsh in their intensity as he spread them over Gaara’s stomach, up under his shoulders, around his neck, like he was checking to see if Gaara was all in one piece, if he was alive. "So fucking pissed."

Gaara groaned a little bit. He couldn’t help it; he felt like shit. Shit that’d been chewed up and spat out. Everything hurt, especially thinking and breathing and moving, and Naruto’s fury was so tangible he could almost see it sparking off his form. Naruto’s fury meant thinking and breathing and moving would be happening a lot soon, and Gaara felt a new wave of exhaustion just from the force of it.

He kissed Naruto back, because there wasn’t much else to do in the situation at the present moment. It felt good to have Naruto’s lips on his too, chapped and warm and powerful. It felt better than anything else.

Naruto paused to breathe in great shuddering breaths, like he might be about to cry. His hands had stopped their frantic roving and were cupping Gaara’s face.

“What were you thinking!?”

Gaara sighed. He was incredibly tired, and Naruto’s face was tense, scared. Like he needed an answer right away. 

Gaara didn’t have any answers. No answers at all, except that he’d wanted to, and Naruto hadn’t been there, Naruto had been gone. Gaara had needed him and been angry he needed him, and angry he was gone and maybe he wasn’t really thinking straight. Gaara was hurting, hurting so bad that god, he just wanted something for himself. Something, anything, anything at all.

He grunted. “I’m not sorry.”

A pause.

Naruto’s jaw tightened like a vise, hands suddenly painful. “What are you on about?”

Gaara just wanted Naruto to kiss him again. Right now, feeling like shit in this disgustingly sterile hospital room, that was all he wanted in the world.

He noticed from the corner of his eye that the polish on Naruto’s nails was chipped. 

“I’m not sorry. I don’t know why you’re so angry…You’re high yourself right now anyway.”

It was true. Naruto’s pupils were a little blown, a smell lingering in his clothes that didn’t have anything to do with the fact he hadn’t washed them in a while. Pot, maybe. Gaara knew Naruto well enough to know when he was faded, even it was only a little bit, and Naruto definitely was. 

Naruto became still, and Gaara looked away from that tight, tense face, feeling not quite guilty.

Naruto’s fingers gripped his jaw painfully, jerking Gaara’s chin back up. His face was wrathful, scars standing out dark and open on his cheeks.

“I’ve been worried sick about you, you little shit. Did you know you almost died? Did you know you were passed out in your own vomit? Did you know you’ve been unconscious for two and half fucking days?”

He leaned down close to Gaara’s face, fingers tightening even more.

“Did you know when Sasuke found you, you didn’t even have a pulse?”

Gaara couldn’t help but chuckle at that, weakly and not without a little malice. 

“I guess Sasuke’s found both of us now.”

Naruto jolted like he’d been physically stung. He jerked away from Gaara, off of the bed entirely, and stood staring down at him blankly, like he didn’t know who he was looking at.

Gaara missed the weighted warmth on his chest where Naruto had been sitting immediately after it lifted. He felt the cold, sterile air that rushed in to replace it, and hated himself a little bit.

Naruto’s face was blank, but his words were hot, and the twang of his accented speech felt like the bowstring of an arrow flying. “When are you going to start giving a shit Gaara? I don’t care about anything much either, but all you’ve got is your life, and I don’t know the hell why you’d risk losing that too. Being alive is the most important thing you’ve got!”

He ran one hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes. Garra suddenly remembered Naruto’s uncle, and how Naruto had escaped death by a hair of an inch. How Naruto has dreams and plans and promises.

“Sasuke doesn’t have anything to do with anything. This is about your life, you stupid fuck.”

Gaara felt like shit. Like maybe he was going to be sick. 

No, really, he was going to be sick. Naruto was standing there, all shiny and impossible and ridiculous. The sterile walls of the hospital barely could contain all of his life, glowing from his eyes, his words. Gaara swallowed, turned his face away, struggled against the way Naruto’s words lodged themselves under his skin, somewhere near his stomach.

“I…I don’t know why the hell you care.”

Naruto spluttered a little, surprised by such a stupid statement. He leaned over and kissed Gaara, messily hard and fast, his lips rough. Gaara ached to kiss him back, to wrap his arms around him and bury his face in that salty-sweet neck, but the kiss is too sudden, too unexpected and far too short. Naruto had already pulled away, turned around. 

“Somebody’s got too.”

Gaara slumped down into his blankets after Naruto left, steps long and fast and door slamming behind him with a clang that reminded Gaara of prison bars. It echoed in his ears, like a lingering sting. The air in his nose tubes smelled tinny, stale, like disinfectant and hard soaped linens. Without the presence of Naruto, sun-burnt light against his retinas, the hospital room was a bare and blurry white, and Gaara was empty under his blankets, cold and sterile.

That was the trouble with hospitals; they were just too fucking sterile. Too fucking white.

He felt like shit.

X

Temari never did stand for any shit, and when she came to pick up Gaara from the Hospital three days later, Gaara could tell there would be at least an eon of hell to pay, plus his soul. 

Surprisingly though, His half-sister’s mixed look of anger and concern melted when she looked at him and instead of chewing his head off, she just helped him briskly into the car. 

Her voice gruff, she turned to look at him as he slumped in his seat. “So, are you staying at my place for a few days?”

Gaara thought about his apartment, and the now distinct lack of Naruto in it, and sighed, nodding his head once, maybe a little gratefully, before leaning against the window.

Suna passed by outside, unending and colorless and bland. Gaara’s mouth felt sandy.

Temari’s sunglasses were new, her hands against the wheel clean and manicured, and her hair was a controlled riot, blonde and beautiful. He’d always liked her hair. He had vague memories from when he was in grade school, and occasionally she’d let him play with it.

Temari slammed a designer heel against the brakes abruptly, skidding to a halt for a red light. Jerked forward in his seat, Gaara sighed again. Temari had never been a great driver.

“I’d rather not have to go back to the hospital right away, if it’s all the same to you, sis.”

Temari glared sideways at him from under her shades; a sharp, icily clear blue gaze that really wasn’t even close to the color of Naruto’s eyes. “I’m not going to take any shit from you Gaara. If I recall, you seem to love putting yourself in the hospital.”

Gaara readied himself for a classic Temari diatribe, but once again she fell silent. It was weird.

“...What?”

She turns to look him in the eye at the next light. 

“Was it because of Naruto?” 

Her voice was level, but Gaara could hear the worried undercurrent in her tone, cropping up despite her usual uncanny ability to be an emotionless hardass.

Temari was the only one of his family to meet Naruto before, and it wasn’t like she had anything against him, but when he’d dazzled her with charm and laughter, Temari had found it hard to ignore a pressing worry nudging the back of her skull.

She was ten years older than Gaara, married now, with a life and a degree and a high-management job where she was in high demand. Temari had always only been a factor in his life, never a constant. 

They were just too far apart. 

Aside from being the only family member Gaara could stand besides Kankuro, who was overseas for two years already and wouldn’t be back for another three, Temari left him alone. It would have made him angry; anger because she couldn’t be there, jealous anger of her pride and her standards and her future, but for all of that, Temari actually did insufferably love him, in some way or another, and so far Gaara hadn’t forgotten.

Temari thought Naruto was inconsistent. She thought he was flighty, whimsical, an ageless thing that sparkled like sunstone and traveled in a different lane from herself, or Gaara, or most other people.

She worried about Gaara sometimes, that pressing nudge in her head, worried that he’d get too close to Naruto and burn himself up.

Gaara turned his face away again. “...It doesn’t matter.”

Her hands tightened on the wheel. 

“It does to me, you ridiculous twit.” 

The growled rebuttal startled a ragged laugh out of him, however fake. 

“Isn’t this what comes of being a little bastard son? Isn’t it what I’m supposed to do?” He started out sarcastic, but somehow the words cut a little too sharply. He clenched his fists. “Won’t it make all of them happy? Won’t they just be so fucking proud.” Gaara spat the words out before he could stop them.

He wanted to strangle something.

Temari didn't bother to respond to such bullshit.  
They traveled the rest of the ride in complete silence. But before they got out of the car, she turned to look him straight in the eye, and Gaara was pinned by her gaze; cold and sharp and calculating as always. 

“I wouldn't think that you would want to make them proud Gaara. I would think you’d want to stick it right in their fucking faces, and go live your life for yourself.” 

Then she strode into the apartment building without a backward glance. 

X

Gaara lazes around in Temari’s extremely nice apartment for about a week, feeling sorry for himself and hoping Naruto comes to find him.

Temari, for the most part, leaves him alone. That’s the nice thing about Temari you see; when she’s said her piece, she’s done.

Gaara drowns his cereal in milk, and pointedly doesn’t think about what she said. He also pointedly doesn't think about Naruto, and the burning forest fire in his eyes when he said that Gaara had to start living for something. He really, really, pointedly doesn't think about Sasuke finding him choking on his own puke either. No one needs that mental image. 

He doesn’t look at himself in the mirror, because remembering holding the bag of pills in his hand at the bathroom sink is too vivid a memory. The intensity of it scares him, makes him flinch away from half-formed thoughts that whisper he should try again.

Temari might be done with him, but she is strict as hell about drugs and other, more illicit clubs that Gaara would’ve been happy to throw himself into during the night, and so he spends most of the week lazing in bed, concentrating on not thinking about things with single-minded determination.

Even with the blistering echo of Naruto’s accusatory voice in his ears, Gaara can’t stop himself from being angry, angrier than he’s ever been in his life. 

X

When Gaara sees Naruto again, it is because he has stopped by his apartment with a few groceries on the way back to Temari’s place, with a the vague idea of leaving Naruto a passive-aggressive note, or just strolling in to make dinner right there in his own kitchen because it’s his fucking place goddamn it, and doesn’t he deserve that? But Naruto is there when he fumbles his key into the lock, sitting slouched at the table with a joint perched on his lips and a half-eaten cup of ramen. To be quite honest, Gaara hadn’t been expecting to actually see him.

Naruto looks up, surprise and a kind of guarded judgement flickering in his eyes. Gaara doesn’t like seeing that defensive guard flare into life, because one thing Naruto has always been is direct. He is always open, always honest to a fault. Gaara hates the distance. But he hates the surprise more.

He shoves away his own shock of seeing Naruto so suddenly, so casually and doesn’t let it show. Instead he walks in and sets the bag of groceries down on the counter with a dull thud. 

There is a pause.

“I was waiting for you to come find me.”

Naruto puts out his cigarette on the edge of the table. His fingers have a slight tremor in them, like he can’t contain his energy. He shifts in his seat. “Babe...” 

Gaara doesn’t want to let him finish. He doesn’t want excuses. He doesn’t want to let Naruto get away with the last word, like he did at the hospital, even though the thought of Naruto’s words there puts knots in Gaara’s stomach. 

He wants Naruto to hurt. 

“No. I was waiting for you to come find me. I was waiting for you to come talk to me. I was waiting. What’ve you been doing Naruto? Packing up your last suitcase?”

Naruto’s eyes narrow. “Gaara, you’re still being stupid. Do you know what it did to me, hearing what you did? Seeing you being put in a fucking ambulance? Have you bothered to think about how you made the people who love you feel?” He runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “I’m fucking disappointed in you Gaara, and you don’t even realize why.”

“What, all two people in this world who give a damn about me? Well, gee, I fucking apologize Naruto. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been such a selfish asshole in the first place. Maybe then I could trust you!” 

Naruto’s eyes blaze. He stands up, gets close into Gaara’s personal space, and it’s exhilarating having him this close, smelling like ramen noodles and smoke and grassy sweat. Gaara wants him to come closer, closer.

“Babe, what the hell is wrong with you? You can’t trust me? Seriously Gaara, enlighten the fuck outta me. Just what the fuck hell have I done?”

Gaara feels his face redden, his fists tighten. Naruto is too open now, all laid out like a sheet on the line and Gaara wants to stain it, wants to grind him into the dirt and scream.

“You were going to leave me! You still are! You are packing up with all your precious dreams and I’m not supposed to give a fuck, but I do Naruto. I really, really, fucking do. I fucking love you and you’re leaving without caring two shits about me.” 

Naruto’s mouth falls open, shock splayed over his face. He is so close that Gaara can see the splotches of angry color standing out on his cheeks, the individual pale eyelashes of his wide blue eyes. He catches Gaara’s wrists in his grip, holds them up and digs his nails into the skin tightly when Gaara tries to jerk away. “So you think that pile of shit is the truth and it makes you want to kill yourself?! Gaara, that’s so fucking messed up! I--” 

“--No!” Gaara interrupts him and feels like he’s going to cry because he’s never had to say this before, never been this close to breaking before. It’s scared the fuck out of him too, and Naruto should know that, he should fucking know that.

“I just wanted--I wanted something that was mine, that was--Fuck, you think I’m not scared shitless by myself right now?! I don’t even know how to think about it--I wanted to have some goddamn control--” 

He tries again to jerk from Naruto’s grasp and Naruto shoves him into the wall, smacks his head against it and holds him there, his eyes dark and painful. “You’re being a blind, shit-stupid fucker, Gaara. You say I was leaving you!? You were gonna fucking come with me!”

Gaara goes still. The words echo in the tiny hallway, fragmented and raw with emotion.

For a moment he is too shocked to say anything, and then he manages to wrench his wrist out of Naruto’s grip, pulls it back, and slams his fist into Naruto’s cheek. 

“FUCK!”

Naruto reels, holding a hand over his face. “Shit! God Gaara!” 

Gaara is panting, wild-eyed. There is some reckless abandon in the way his knuckles are tingling, in the way Naruto spits something red from his mouth onto the floor. He has never felt so alive in his life. 

“You think I would fucking leave Suna City!? You think I was just going to throw myself at your feet? I have nothing here, Naruto, but I’m not going to leave my city to trail after you. You should have fucking told me!”

Naruto’s eyes are so bright now, the way he cradles his jaw tenderly and the way he looks at Gaara suddenly so similar. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse and rough and it lights a fire along Gaara’s spine.

“God, I don’t know what I thought!” He comes forward again and it makes Gaara giddy, how when he pushes Naruto away Naruto will come right back like the pull of gravity, beautiful and golden and boxing Gaara against the wall, chest to chest and face to face. “Look Gaara, I know, I know I should have told you, I should’ve done something--and I’m always getting it wrong--” His voice breaks, cracked like the scars that have cracked his face open, and it makes Gaara hard and aching. “It’s just-- I want you babe. I’ve gotta get outta here but I want you with me so fucking bad.” 

Gaara can see the gut-ripping sincerity in Naruto’s eyes, in the way his hand grips the back of Gaara’s neck like a vice. He is so close, and Gaara feels drunk with his closeness. After not seeing Naruto for nearly more than a week it’s like an overdrive to his senses, and he feels desperate and hungry and exhausted, all at once. 

He jerks his head up to glare at his Naruto, bringing his hands up to cup Naruto’s face roughly and kiss him because he fucking deserves a real kiss, one where he can feel the slide of Naruto’s tongue and taste the salty edge of his sweat. He deserves it. Naruto crushes him into the wall when he kisses back, hungry on Gaara’s mouth, and Gaara shucks his hand under Naruto’s thin white T-shirt, his nails into the muscles of his shoulders just to feel him shudder. 

He pulls away for half of a stretched moment in time, mouth open and panting against Naruto’s lips. Naruto meets his eyes and Gaara wants to sob but he is burning up too fast to try. He groans instead, arches his head back into the wall with a crack--thrusts his hips forward like an offering. 

“Fuck me, Naruto.”

X

They fuck--crashing together hard and fast and brutally violent, ripping clothes away and streaking lines into one another's skin with a furious urgency that is more hopeless than they want to admit.

They fuck against the hallway wall, on the kitchen table. They stumble into the bedroom and Naruto fucks Gaara into the sheets, kneeling over him on the bed with his breath panting harsh and glorious into Gaara’s ear, murmuring desperate phrases that pull ragged moans from Gaara’s throat. Gaara shivers, shakes and arches with sweat dripping from his skin, something buzzing in his teeth. 

Something, something horrible and beautiful and Gaara gasps and chokes on the feeling, holds on as tight as he can, because he can feel it slipping, feel it starting to fade away.

It's one of the best fucks Gaara's ever had, with the way Naruto clutches at his skin and the tender press of his mouth along Gaara's collarbone, up his neck, down the ridged knobs of this spine. Gaara can’t help but smile because he knows he is the only one in the world to make Naruto feel like this, this special way, and that knowledge thrums powerfully through his bones like a thunderous victory cry.

He feels full and overwhelmed and on fire--like he can't handle the brightness burning through his veins for a moment longer, like he's been scraped raw.

Afterward, finally burned into exhaustion, Naruto rubs his hand over the bruise that is already starting to bloom like a dark flower over his cheekbone and turns over in their bed. He is sweat-streaked, his neck straining as he works his throat for breath. 

Gaara's is sitting up, faced away from him, naked and shameless. The sun setting through their window casts a blazing red light, and Gaara tries to focus all his energy on exact color that sends fractals through the warped glass onto their stained sheets.

"We're finished, aren't we Naruto." 

It's not even a question.

Gaara's wants Naruto to say something, anything. He begs him silently to counteract this certainty that is welling up in Gaara's chest, this awful certainty.

It's just not fucking fair.

But in all honesty, Gaara's knows its the truth. It's been the truth for a long time, and no matter how much Gaara needs Naruto, or Naruto loves Gaara, the truth isn't going to change. 

In bed beside him, Naruto is horribly quiet.

Gaara sighs like all the all the air he’s ever breathed has suddenly been released, leans back. Naruto scoots forward and moves to slowly kiss softly at his palm, his wrist, the inside of his arm. Gaara lets him kiss his skin like it’s precious up to the nape of his neck, ease him back into the bed and curl around him, chin tucked over his shoulder and forearms locked around Gaara's stomach. 

Naruto kisses his ear sweetly, murmurs meaningless nothings to Gaara late into the night against his jaw as Gaara shudders in his arms, and Gaara tries to remember every single one of them, relishes every minute that slips by on the clock as Naruto slowly falls asleep around him. He drinks them all in gloriously, because he knows they will never be like this again.

X

“Oh darling,

\--Kiss me, like you wanna be loved.  
You wanna be loved--"

Time passed. Gaara focused on trying not to think about it, about him, about anything much at all. There are too many hours in the day suddenly, too much time for him to fill with something other than a drug or the prick of a needle, and so for once in his life he takes Temari’s advice, and calls a help line. He doesn’t like to say much, but static on the other end of the phone reminds Gaara of what he imagines sea waves sound like.

\--I was made to keep your body warm,  
But I’m cold as the wind blows so please just hold me in your arms--”

X

Gaara saw them completely by accident, spotted them sitting in a dingy little café in the district near the Dunes as he walked across the street. They sat near the window, cups of rich Suna coffee steaming by their elbows in sticky saucers. Sasuke leaned against the booth, looking bored. Naruto’s chin was resting on his hand lazily. He wasn’t due to leave Suna until the next day, Gaara knew that much. He could see that Naruto had painted his nails again, this time a bright, eye-popping shade of orange. The café owners were probably scandalized. 

It made Gaara want to simultaneously bite Naruto’s fingers off and laugh himself silly.

They weren’t talking much, but even from across the street, Gaara was suddenly struck by a thought that made him pause.

With the two of them still in the café window, the glass sun-warped and spangling light, they looked so uncomplicatedly complete, so simply right. As if they’d been sitting there their whole lives. 

The grin that split Naruto’s face open. The careless brooding settled on Sasuke’s lips, like morning shadow-stubble. Even with the ostentatious tattoo that swirled over Naruto’s cut-off bared shoulder, the color of his nails, and the bruise on his cheek that Gaara had put there himself.

His knuckles stung again at the thought of the blow now, but it still looked right. It looked quiet, and it looked real. Real as coffee spilled in a saucer, as Formica table tops, and sand that scratched between toes. Real as the sky above them all, the sky that somehow today looked like a shade away from blue.

As he watched, Sasuke’s mouth started to sneer. Gaara could almost hear the words forming on his lips; “Che. Dumbass.” 

Naruto’s eyes crescented in a goofy smile.

Gaara waited to feel some sort of emotion at the casual way they touched; Naruto pulling Sasuke’s hair, Sasuke’s fingers flicking Naruto’s ear. Some sort of indigence or even jealousy, but no such thing came swelling in his throat. They looked too right, sitting there, as if they would continue on like that until the end of the world.

It was too much, too harsh, to say that Naruto didn’t belong with Gaara. That was selfish thinking, and Gaara could only delude himself for so long with obvious falsehoods such as that. The truth of it was that Naruto didn’t belong in Suna.

Naruto was quicksilver, and the sweet smell that rises in the air right before rain. (It’s a scent Gaara has known only a handful of times in his life, but he could’ve sworn that humid, tingling smell lingered under Naruto’s skin, in his breath.) Naruto was not sandstorms or wind-blown tents resting on the edge of a desert, or even the thick-blooded spicy Suna coffee that he loved so much. No, Naruto was too vivid for Suna, too bright, like an exploding canvas that Suna couldn’t soak up the colors of fast enough.

Naruto was gloriously, effortlessly alive.

Gaara pushed his hair out of his eyes. The deep red-dyed strands stood out against Suna City walls, but truthfully, Gaara knew that Naruto was a hundred times brighter, a hundred times more alive than he was right now, or might ever be.

It was irritating. It was ridiculous. It was wrenching and perfect and made Gaara’s fists clench tight by his sides, but it was just the way life was.

And Naruto didn’t belong in Suna.

He watched them in the café a moment longer, dwelling on the milk mustache dewy Naruto’s upper lip, the way his fingers curled loosely around his cup. His heart was swollen painfully against his ribcage and up into his throat, full and breathless. 

He was terribly angry, annoyingly peaceful, reckless and sad and half in love with him still anyway— a roiling, bittersweet, dying embers love.

X

Gaara lit a cigarette, the lighter flicking rough under his thumb, and turned away from the café. He walked down the street, his steps sure and steady. He had a class seminar to get to.

The whispers of sand under his shoes felt soft, even with pavement underneath, his feet making shushing sounds with every step. Gazing at the wide expanse of Suna City that shimmered before him as it reflected the sun, Gaara imagined that perhaps he was walking on an ocean.

X

Fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Oh my god, I can’t believe it’s actually done! Finally! I really, really hope you all enjoyed it. I spent about two years working on this fic on and off, so please, please tell me your thoughts on it! I welcome all feedback!
> 
> Note: The song lyrics at the beginning and end are from Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran, respectively. I feel like Smith’s whole album is inspiration for the second half of this fic. Let me know what you think!
> 
> Love and hugs,
> 
> -Lute


End file.
